Discovery Mondays: 'Sensors, or the art of measuring limits'

In their study of the infinitesimally small, CERN's physicists, engineers and technicians work at the highest levels of precision.

To ensure maximum performance, the most sensitive accelerator and detector components have to be positioned with razor-sharp precision. Detector components, for instance, sometimes need to be aligned to the nearest thousandth of a millimetre! The positioning of the LHC beam is another crucial operation requiring similarly phenomenal precision.

Come to the next Discovery Monday and see how different types of sensors are used to achieve the required degrees of precision. The Hydrostatic Levelling System (HLS), for instance, relies on the same principle of communicating vessels that was already employed in antiquity for the construction of aqueducts, bridges and other edifices. You will discover the instrumentation that makes it possible to maintain the beams in vacuum chambers during their journeys of several billion kilometres in the large loops of the accelerators.

But CERN's sensors are so sensitive that they sometimes detect the unexpected, such as the influence of the moon or earth tremors on the other side of the planet!

More on these tiny precision-measurement devices on 8 May.

The event will be conducted in French.